Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Saudi "Allies" Continue to Fund Islamic Extremism

For me, one of the most maddening things in America's foreign policy is the continued alliance with Saudi Arabia even as that nation and its wealthy citizens remain the number one financiers of Islamic extremism world-wide. The right fumes about Iran, but in terms of helping to finance extremists in nations around the world, Saudi Arabia leaves Iran in the dust. A very lengthy piece in the New York Times looks at Saudi Arabia's disturbing track record of funding extremism in Europe and elsewhere. There need to be severe consequences to Saudi Arabia and soon. Here are article highlights (please read the entire piece):

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump don’t agree on much, but Saudi Arabia
may be an exception. She has deplored Saudi Arabia’s support for
“radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young
people on a path towards extremism.” He has called the Saudis “the world’s biggest
funders of terrorism.”

The first American diplomat
to serve as envoy to Muslim communities around the world visited 80 countries
and concluded that the Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic
traditions. “If the Saudis do not cease what they are doing,” the official,
Farah Pandith, wrote last year, “there must be diplomatic,
cultural and economic consequences.”

And hardly a week passes
without a television pundit or a newspaper columnist blaming Saudi Arabia
for jihadist violence. On HBO, Bill Maher calls Saudi teachings “medieval,” adding an
epithet. In The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the Saudis have “created a
monster in the world of Islam.”

The idea has become a
commonplace: that Saudi Arabia’s export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal,
fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fueled global extremism
and contributed to terrorism. As the Islamic State projects its menacing calls
for violence into the West, directing or inspiring terrorist attacks in country
after country, an old debate over Saudi influence on Islam has taken on new
relevance.

In the realm of extremist Islam, the Saudis are “both the arsonists
and the firefighters,” said William McCants, a Brookings Institution scholar.
“They promote a very toxic form of Islam that draws sharp lines between a small
number of true believers and everyone else, Muslim and non-Muslim,” he said,
providing ideological fodder for violent jihadists.

Yet at the same time,
“they’re our partners in counterterrorism,” said Mr. McCants, one of three
dozen academics, government officials and experts on Islam from multiple
countries interviewed for this article.

Saudi leaders seek good
relations with the West and see jihadist violence as a menace that could
endanger their rule, especially now that the Islamic State is staging attacks
in the kingdom — 25 in the last eight months, by the government’s count. But
they are also driven by their rivalry with Iran, and they depend for legitimacy
on a clerical establishment dedicated to a reactionary set of beliefs. Those
conflicting goals can play out in a bafflingly inconsistent manner.

[T]he
most important effect of Saudi proselytizing might have been to slow the
evolution of Islam, blocking its natural accommodation to a diverse and
globalized world. “If there was going to be an Islamic reformation in the 20th
century, the Saudis probably prevented it by pumping out literalism,” he said.

The reach of the Saudis has been stunning, touching nearly every
country with a Muslim population, from the Gothenburg Mosque in Sweden to the
King Faisal Mosque in Chad, from the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles to the
Seoul Central Mosque in South Korea. Support has come from the Saudi government;
the royal family; Saudi charities; and Saudi-sponsored organizations including
the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the
International Islamic Relief Organization, providing the hardware of impressive
edifices and the software of preaching and teaching.

There is a broad consensus
that the Saudi ideological juggernaut has disrupted local Islamic traditions in
dozens of countries — the result of lavish spending on religious outreach for
half a century, estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.

In
many countries, Wahhabist preaching has encouraged a harshly judgmental
religion, contributing to majority support in some polls in Egypt, Pakistan
and other countries for stoning for adultery and execution for anyone trying to
leave Islam. . . . . Among Muslim immigrant communities in Europe, the Saudi
influence seems to be just one factor driving radicalization, and not the most
significant. In divided countries like Pakistan and Nigeria, the flood of Saudi
money, and the ideology it promotes, have exacerbated divisions over religion
that regularly prove lethal.

And
for a small minority in many countries, the exclusionary Saudi version of Sunni
Islam, with its denigration of Jews and Christians, as well as of Muslims of
Shiite, Sufi and other traditions, may have made some people vulnerable to the
lure of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups. “There’s
only so much dehumanizing of the other that you can be exposed to — and exposed
to as the word of God — without becoming susceptible to recruitment,” said
David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies in Washington who tracks Saudi influence.

Exhibit
A may be Saudi Arabia itself, which produced not only Osama bin Laden, but also
15 of the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001; sent more suicide bombers than any other country to
Iraq after the 2003 invasion; and has supplied more foreign fighters to the Islamic State,
2,500, than any country other than Tunisia.

One American former official who has begun to speak out is Ms.
Pandith, the State Department’s first special representative to Muslim
communities worldwide. From 2009 to 2014, she visited Muslims in 80 countries
and concluded that Saudi influence was pernicious and universal.

“In each place I visited,
the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence,” she wrote in The New York Times last year. She
said the United States should “disrupt the training of extremist imams,”
“reject free Saudi textbooks and translations that are filled with hate,” and
“prevent the Saudis from demolishing local Muslim religious and cultural sites
that are evidence of the diversity of Islam.” She plans to address the subject
in a book scheduled for publication next year.

When will America recognize Saudi Arabia for what it truly is: an enemy of America and American principles. It needs to be treated as an enemy starting immediately.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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